Saturday, September 03, 2016

As regular readers know, I view conservative Christians as some of the most selfish, self-centered and hypocrisy-filled people one will ever meet. They are nothing less than modern day Pharisees. But this is particularly true of what I call the "professional Christian" crowd that seeks power while fleecing the gullible and ignorant. They make the money lenders in the Temple that Christ supposedly decried look ethical and upstanding. Indeed, their embrace of Donald Trump puts a glaring spotlight on their hypocrisy and hunger for power. I came across a column from some time back that takes aim at these dangerous hypocrites, including Jerry Falwell, Jr., James Dobson and Franklin Graham, all foul individuals in my estimation. Here are some column highlights:

To paraphrase P.T. Barnum,
“There’s a sucker born again every minute.”

This week, according to a
roomful of dewy-eyed pastors and fawning televangelists who met behind closed doors
with GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump, he has accepted Jesus Christ as
his Lord and Savior and is apparently now suitable for Christians
and church leaders to fully and passionately support.

Never mind that Trump has
made no such claims himself, nor given any indication by word or deed that
would lead anyone
to believe such outrageous proclamations. And disregard Trump’s
growing legacy of ignorant rants against Muslims,
Mexicans, women, immigrants, and almost any groups who aren’t wealthy
or white—or both.

As
a Christian and a pastor, it’s all been equally fascinating and
infuriating watching supposed men and women (well, mostly men) of God
engage in all sorts of embarrassing theological gymnastics to try and connect
the most convoluted and disparate of dots in order to justify hitching
their ministries to Trump’s toxic wagon.

This is a
revelatory moment for we who claim Christianity, one that
crystallizes how much Dobson and the rest of these folks have lost the plot and
how faithfully they now serve only themselves.

It turns out, when it
comes to power the Evangelical Right will go to bed with just about anybody.
They’re that easy.

The
truth is, Donald Trump is a fairly horrible human being if you’re going to
use any measurement of morality. He’s neither done nor said anything that one
could categorize as remotely resembling Jesus. Lots of smart people understand
this. But this isn’t about him. He’s doing what most of us expect him to do:
try and court a valuable and much-needed voting block without
self-awareness, shame, or decency. This isn’t a surprise.

[T]his
about supposed representatives of Jesus whoring themselves out just to have
what they hope will be the next President’s ear and pretending it’s the work of
God. It’s about discarding faith to keep power in their party. It’s
about a Christianity that no longer has need or use for Jesus. They themselves
are the bloated golden calf they’re bowing down to and Trump is just a means to
this end—and it’s exactly what is killing the Church.

Every day people tell me that they’re
finished with organized Christianity; that they’re walking away from the
American Church for good, and it isn’t because of gays or cultural decay or
materialism or lust or whatever these preachers like to lift while in the
pulpit. These millions of honest, wise (and yes faithful) people are making
their exodus because they see Dobson and Falwell and people like
them and they realize the absolute absurdity of it all.

It’s a compete disconnect undermining the
very bedrock of their core beliefs, and so they’re choosing to leave instead of
being associated with such a blatant power lust move. They’ve run out
of patience with a spirituality
that’s for sale. They’re through with a Christianity that only needs to win.

One
of the most startling ironies, is that these are the same self-professed
“defenders of the faith”, who for the last eight years have ruthlessly persecuted
a President who has not only repeatedly professed personal spirituality, but
whose conduct, marriage, and family are everything they claim they’re
for. This was never good enough for them to support or pray for him—or even
call him a Christian.

Yet Donald Trump, in all his philandering,
materialistic, racist, bigoted, misogynist glory is somehow worthy of reverence
because somewhere deep down (in a way that only these leaders see), he loves
Jesus. If you believe that I have some swamp land in Alabama for you.

If Trump’s version of
Christianity is the hateful, politicized, bullying, opportunist variety these
Right Evangelical extremists have been living for the past few
decades—I’ll pass.

I continue to believe that it is the "godly folk" themselves who are accelerating the well-deserved death of Christianity. Expect the exodus from organized religion to continue if not accelerate.

Among Donald trump's many unattractive attributes are his dishonesty, hypocrisy, willingness to use intimidation and underhanded tactics to screw contractors, and view that he is above the law. The hypocrisy is particularly telling in the context of Trump's rantings about the non-enforcement of immigration laws - laws that his modeling agency ignored and flouted at will. Mother Jones looks at Trump Model Management. Here are story highlights (read the entire piece):

Republican nominee Donald Trump has placed immigration
at the core of his presidential campaign. He has claimed that undocumented
immigrants are "taking our jobs" and "taking our money,"
pledged to deport them en masse, and vowed to build a wall on the Mexican
border. At one point he demanded a ban on Muslims entering the country.
Speaking to supporters in Iowa on Saturday, Trump said he would crack down on
visitors to the United States who overstay their visas anddeclaredthat when any American citizen
"loses their job to an illegal immigrant, the rights of that American
citizen have been violated." And he is scheduled to give a major address
on immigration in Arizona on Wednesday night.

But the mogul's New York modeling agency, Trump Model
Management, has profited from using foreign models who came to the United
States on tourist visas that did not permit them to work here, according to
three former Trump models, all noncitizens, who shared their stories withMother Jones.Financial andimmigration recordsincluded in a recent lawsuit filed by
a fourth former Trump model show that she, too, worked for Trump's agency in
the United States without a proper visa.

Foreigners who visit the United States as tourists are
generally not permitted to engage in any sort of employment unless they obtain
a special visa, a process that typically entails an employer applying for
approval on behalf of a prospective employee. Employers risk fines and possible
criminal charges for using undocumented labor.

Founded in 1999, Trump Model Management "has
risen to the top of the fashion market,"boaststhe Trump Organization's website, and
has a name "that symbolizes success." According to afinancial disclosurefiled by his campaign in May, Donald
Trump earned nearly $2 million from the company, in which he holds an 85
percent stake. Meanwhile, some former Trump models say they barely made any
money working for the agency because of the high fees for rent and other
expenses that were charged by the company.

Canadian-bornRachel Blaisspent nearly three years working for
Trump Model Management. After first signing with the agency in March 2004, she
said, she performed a series of modeling gigs for Trump's company in the United
States without a work visa.

AtMother
Jones' request, Blais provided a detailed financial statement from Trump
Model Management and aletterfrom an immigration lawyer who, in the
fall of 2004, eventually secured a visa that would permit her to work legally
in the United States. These records show a six-month gap between when she began
working in the United States and when she was granted a work visa. During that
time, Blais appeared on Trump's hit reality TV show,The Apprentice, modeling
outfits designed by his business protégés. As Blais walked the runway, Donald
Trump looked on from the front row.Two other former Trump models—who requested anonymity to
speak freely about their experiences, and who we are giving the pseudonyms Anna
and Kate—said the agency never obtained work visas on their behalf, even as
they performed modeling assignments in the United States. (They provided
photographs from some of these jobs, andMother
Jonesconfirmed with the photographers or
stylists that these shoots occurred in the United States.)

According
to three immigration lawyers consulted byMother
Jones, even unpaid employment is against the law for foreign nationals who
do not have a work visa. "If the US company is benefiting from that
person, that's work," explained Anastasia
Tonello, global head of the US immigration team at Laura Devine
Attorneys in New York. These rules for immigrants are in place to "protect
them from being exploited," she said. "That US company shouldn't be
making money off you."

Two of the
former Trump models said Trump's agency encouraged them to deceive customs
officials about why they were visiting the United States and told them to lie
on customs forms about where they intended to live. Anna said she received a
specific instruction from a Trump agency representative: "If they ask you
any questions, you're just here for meetings."

Kate, who worked for Trump Model Management in 2004, marveled
at how her former boss has recently branded himself as an
anti-illegal-immigration crusader on the campaign trail. "He doesn't want
to let anyone into the US anymore," she said. "Meanwhile, behind
everyone's back, he's bringing in all of these girls from all over the world
and they're working illegally."

In a recent interview, she said her experience with Trump's
firm stood out: "Honestly, they are the most crooked agency I've ever
worked for, and I've worked for quite a few."

The three former Trump models said Trump's agency was aware
of the complications posed by their foreign status. Anna and Kate said the
company coached them on how to circumvent immigration laws. Kate recalled being
told, "When you're stuck at immigration, say that you're coming as a
tourist. If they go through your luggage and they find your portfolio, tell
them that you're going there to look for an agent."

These days, Kate said, she believes that Trump
has been fooling American voters with his anti-immigrant rhetoric, given that his
own agency had engaged in the practices he has denounced. "He doesn't like
the face of a Mexican or a Muslim," she said, "but because these
[models] are beautiful girls, it's okay? He's such a hypocrite."

During my time as a Republican Party member and activist, white supremacists and white nationalists were not openly welcomed into the Party. Indeed, when someone did engage in rants along such lines, most of us rolled our eyes and viewed the individual akin to an insane family member that one tries to keep quiet and out of public view. Those days are gone and, with the rise of Donald Trump, white supremacy and white nationalism is one of the twin pillars of today's Republican Party - the other is right wing Christian religious extremism, although it greatly overlaps the Party's open racism. A piece in Salon looks at some of Trump's bizarre conspiracy theories and provides a good explanation of the obsession with the now mainstream fringe elements who believe Mexico is engaged in a conspiracy to reconquer the American Southwest and more. Here are excerpts:

[T]he notion that the Mexican government is
orchestrating an invasion of the United States has been a staple on the white
nationalist far right for years.

“This is a longstanding conspiracy on the radical right,”
said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “There
have been claims for the better part of ten years now that Mexico is secretly
planning to reconquer the American Southwest.”

That conspiracy to take over the Southwest goes by the names
Plan de Aztlán (taken froma 1969 Chicano movement manifesto) and
“the Reconquista,” or Reconquest. One theory is that it will happen through the
“birth canal,” meaning that Mexican women are being sent to the United States
to give birth to lots of children and take power through sheer demographic force.
The other is that it will take place through force of arms. The Federation for
American Immigration Reform, one of themost extremebut influential anti-immigrant
organizations,has lent its supportto the theory.

“It boils down to the claim that Mexico is consciously infiltrating
its citizens into the United States in order to take back the lands lost to the
Americans,” said Potok.

A 2006 article in Front Page Magazine, for example,described“the Mexican invasion of the United
States” as “a campaign to occupy and gain power over our country — a project
encouraged, abetted, and organized by the Mexican state and supported by the
leading elements of Mexican society.”

In 2005, anti-immigrant advocatesseized onthe Mexican government’s distribution
of a safety guide to migrants as evidence that the government was coordinating
their outmigration for the economic purpose of ensuring remittances. Rick
Oltman of FAIRreportedly saidthe books were evidence of “the
Mexican government trying to protect its most valuable export, which is illegal
migrants.”

The theory probably originated, said Potok, in a small group
called American Patrol, based in Southern Arizona, and was popular amongst
Minutemen anti-immigrant militiamen during their heyday, from the mid to late
2000s.

“It’s a conspiracy theory that began on a tiny hate
group on the Arizona that has spread far and wide and quite deeply penetrated
the mainstream,” said Potok.

In 2014, a video circulated of a man who described himself as
a former Border Patrol agent, who charged that the influx of refugee children
was an act of “asymmetrical warfare” carried out by unnamed malignant forces so
that they could sneak in drugs and chemical and biological weapons (he also put
suggested that the Ebola outbreak in Africa was spread by intentional
conspiracy). The video was cited by right-wing figuresincluding former Congressman Allen West.

Others,including former Texas Gov. Rick Perry,accusedthe
U.S. government of being complicit in coordinating the wave of Central American
child refugees. That taps into the notion, said Potok, that President Obama
wants immigrants and refugees to come to the United States because they will be
future Democratic voters. It’s also part of a broader theory that dangerous
forces abroad are allied with an internal fifth column of liberals who are
aiding the enemy for their own nefarious purposes.The reality, of course, is that Mexico doesn’t decide which
immigrants come to the United States; immigrants experiencing complex social
and economic realities do. But conspiratorial explanations become increasingly
appealing as the global forces that shape people’s lives become ever more
abstract. Trump isn’t just tapping into racist sentiment. He’s channeling a
right-wing account of how the world works that is no longer relegated to the
fringe.

There have been many columns and news stories about Donald Trump's narcissism and the danger his self-absorption would pose to the country and world should he ever make it to the White House. But perhaps the most accurate description of the man can be found in a column in the Chicago Tribune by Garrison Keillor (thanks to the reader who sent me the link). That Trump is one psychologically twisted individual with juvenile impulses is an understatement. Here are column highlights:

Your eyes look dead and your scowl does not
suggest American greatness so much as American indigestion. Your hair is the
wrong color: People don't want a president to be that shade of blond. You know
that now.

Why doesn't someone in your
entourage dare to say these things? So sad. The fans in the arenas are wild
about you, and Sean Hannity is as loyal as they come, but Rudy and Christie and
Newt are reassuring in that stilted way of hospital visitors. And The New York
Times treats you like the village idiot. This is painful for a Queens boy
trying to win respect in Manhattan where the Times is the Supreme Liberal
Jewish Anglican Arbiter of Who Has The Smarts and What Goes Where. When you
came to Manhattan 40 years ago, you discovered that in entertainment, the
press, politics, finance, everywhere you went, you ran into Jews, and they are
not like you: Jews didn't go in for big yachts and a fleet of aircraft — they
showed off by way of philanthropy or by raising brilliant offspring. They
sympathized with the civil rights movement. In Queens, blacks were a threat to
property values — they belonged in the Bronx, not down the street. To the
Times, Queens is Cleveland. Bush league. You are Queens. The casinos were
totally Queens, the gold faucets in your triplex, the bragging, the insults,
but you wanted to be liked by Those People. You wanted Mike Bloomberg to invite
you to dinner at his townhouse. You wanted the Times to run a three-part story
about you, that you meditate and are a passionate kayaker and collect
14th-century Islamic mosaics. You wish you were that person but you didn't have
the time.

Running for
president is your last bid for the respect of Manhattan. If you were to win
election, they couldn't ridicule you anymore. They could be horrified, but
there is nothing ridiculous about being Leader of the Free World. You have B-52
bombers at your command. When you go places, a battalion of security guys comb
the environs. You attract really really good speechwriters who give you Churchillian
cadences and toss in quotes from Emerson and Aeschylus and Ecclesiastes.

Labor Day and it is not going well. You
had a very bad month. You tossed out those wisecracks on Twitter and the Earth
shook and your ratings among white suburban women with French cookware
declined. The teleprompter is not your friend. You are in the old tradition of
locker room ranting and big honkers in the steam room, sitting naked, talking
man talk, griping about the goons and ginks and lousy workmanship and the
uppity broads and the great lays and how you vanquished your enemies at the
bank. Profanity is your natural language and vulgar words so as not to offend
the Christers but the fans can still hear it and that's something they love
about you. You are their guy. You are losing and so are they but they love you
for it.

So what do you
do this winter? Hang around one of your mansions? Hit some golf balls? Hire a
ghostwriter to do a new autobiography?

What the fans
don't know is that it's not much fun being a billionaire. You own a lot of big
houses and you wander around in them, followed by a waiter, a bartender, a
masseuse, three housekeepers, and a concierge, and they probably gossip about
you behind your back. Just like nine-tenths of your campaign staff. You're
losing and they know it and they're telling mean stories about you to everybody
and his brother.

Meanwhile,
you keep plugging away. It's the hardest work you've ever done. You walk out in
the white cap and you rant for an hour about stuff that means nothing and the
fans scream and wave their signs and you wish you could level with them for
once and say one true thing: I love you to death and when this is over I will
have nothing that I want.

If he wasn't such a threat to the nation and so indifferent to others, he would almost be a figure worthy of pity. He's made money his god and has perhaps discovered that it cannot find him happiness or the acceptance by his betters that he so desperately craves.

In my view, reputable universities and medical centers have an obligation to condemn bogus research offered to the public under the apparent credibility of such institution. When the Christofascists paid Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas to concoct a flawed and now discredited study that was used to oppose same sex marriage, Regnerus' department stated in no uncertain terms that it rejected his supposed findings and made it clear that Regnerus' views did not represent those of the institution. With the publication of a new, non-peer reviewed article by two individuals with Johns Hopkins University and Medical School, that institution finds itself in a position where it needs to take a similar stance. Sadly, to date it has failed to do so and instead has made mealy mouthed statements about "freedom of expression." As a result, the Human Rights Campaign is on the verge of revoking the institution LGBT-friendly and supportive ranking, and rightly so, in my view. NBC News looks at the controversy. Here are excerpts:

The fate of transgender Americans may now
be in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, as it decides whether to hear thecase of trans student Gavin
Grimm, who is suing his school district in order to use the boys'
bathroom. Those who would deny individuals like Grimm their civil rights,
however, hope to block not just their right to pee — but to be.

McHugh,a retired professor at Johns Hopkins
and a psychiatrist who considers being trans a "mental disorder,"
collaborated with Mayer to change what people think about sexuality and gender
through science. This is an opponent of transgender rights who made a name for
himself bydeclaring
homosexuality a choice,lending
his expertise to legal efforts to block same-sex marriage in California. The
self-described cultural conservative and strict Catholic once compared the
practice of administering hormone therapy to children as akin to performing
"liposuction on an anorexic child."

The
paper was published inThe New Atlantis,which is not a peer-reviewed medical
journal, where reports by members of the Johns Hopkins team might normally be
found. Instead, it's the product of theEthics and Public Policy Center(EPPC), a
Christian-focused conservative think tank "dedicated to applying the
Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical areas of public policy."

Although it might appear unusual that Johns Hopkins
healthcare professionals would publish a paper of this kind in a religious
publication with a political agenda, Mayer shrugged it off.

NBC
OUT has learned that unless Mayer and McHugh's bosses at Johns Hopkins
immediately disassociate themselves from what the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
considers their transphobic findings, the reputation of the university, its
medical school and its hospitals may suffer.

The claims made by the authors have triggered an
unprecedented review byHRC,
which is the nation's leading LGBTQ civil rights organization. The group says
it has been warning the internationally respected university medical school for
several months that it will remove its name from an elite classification in its Healthcare
Equality Index(HEI)
unless action is taken.

A person with knowledge of HRC's leadership decisions told
NBC OUT that after repeated warnings, Johns Hopkins is now on the brink of
losing its perfect score on that closely-watched benchmark for LGBTQ equality.
The source provided the text of a warning sent in June, prior to the release of
the report by Dr. Mayer and Dr. McHugh:"Failure to take significant steps to distance Johns
Hopkins Medicine from this line of Dr. McHugh's personal beliefs and opinions
will be considered an activity that undermines LGBTQ equality and patient care
for the purposes of the Healthcare Equality Index score for Johns Hopkins
Hospital."

NBC
OUT reached out to spokespersons for both Johns Hopkins Medicine as well as the
university, in hopes of getting their reaction to its endangered perfect score,
and to ask whether anyone would endorse or would condemn the controversial
report on transgender Americans.

A spokeswoman for Johns Hopkins Medicine, representing both
institutions, addressed the issue via email, but refused to directly address
the report. . . . they're not endorsing Mayer and McHugh and "not
necessarily" distancing themselves, either. On Monday, HRC sent another
warning letter to Johns Hopkins, mentioning the report in the New Atlantis,
according to the HRC official who requested anonymity.

Sarah McBride, HRC's national press secretary
and the first-ever transgender speaker at an American political convention,
talked to NBC OUT on the record and said she believed the report by Mayer and
McHugh posed "dangerous consequences for transgender people, in particular
transgender young people."

"There's
no question that the public narrative is that this is a Hopkins study,"
and unless the institution were to take action there will be
"consequences," she added. As to what those might be, McBride later
emailed a statement to NBC OUT to shed a few new details.

"We are deeply troubled by the continued use of Johns
Hopkins' name and reputation to back up the unscientific, unfounded, and
harmful personal prejudices of a few of their doctors. We have repeatedly
reached out to Johns Hopkins to express our disappointment and anger with the
ongoing use of their credibility to back up discredited theories. The next
version of our HEI will include criteria regarding institutional support for
similar anti-LGBTQ actions, which means that unless Johns Hopkins addresses
this situation, their score will be significantly impacted. We have made and
will continue to make that fact clear to Johns Hopkins as we work to end this
practice."

The Advocate invited Dean Hamer,
PhD., to investigate Mayer and McHugh's report. Hamer, who is scientist
emeritus at the National Institutes of Health . . . . did not mince
words in his article, writing in conclusion: "When the data we have
struggled so long and hard to collect is twisted and misinterpreted by people
who call themselves scientists, and who receive the benefits and protection of
a mainstream institution such as John Hopkins Medical School, it disgusts me."

The real test of Mayer and
McHugh's controversial report will be whether it is largely ignored, as Dr.
Hamer believes it will be, or whether it will find its way into the hands of
the U.S. Supreme Court justices as they consider what could be a precedent-setting caseon trans civil rights.

If there is anything positive about the rise of Donald Trump it is perhaps the fact that it has caused same, non-racist, and non-religious extremist conservatives to perhaps recognize the poison that the Republican Party has been sowing for years albeit without the open hatred and vileness of Trump and his base of support. Whether this realization will last beyond Trump's hopeful defeat will have to be seen. Will these same conservatives who rail against Trump's GOP positions on steroids conveniently forget the dangers of and damage done by racism, religious extremism and identity politics after the demise of Trump? A conservative columnist in the New York Times laments Trump and his policies of racial division. Sadly, he was an apologist for the GOP for years. Here are excerpts from his column which hopefully he and others will remember in the years to come:

Once, I seem to recall, we had philosophical and ideological
differences. Once, politics was a debate between liberals and conservatives,
between different views of government, different views on values and America’s
role in the world.

But this year, it seems,
everything has been stripped down to the bone. Politics is dividing along crude
identity lines — along race and class. Are you a native-born white or are you
an outsider? Are you one of the people or one of the elites?

Politics is no longer about
argument or discussion; it’s about trying to put your opponents into the box of
the untouchables.

Donald Trump didn’t invent
this game, but he embodies it. His advisers tried to dress him up on Wednesday
afternoon as some sort of mature summiteer. But he just can’t be phony.

By his evening immigration
speech he’d returned to the class and race tropes that have defined his
campaign: that the American government is in the grips of a rich oligarchy that
distorts everything for its benefit; that the American people are besieged by
foreigners, who take their jobs and threaten their lives.

Trump argues that immigration has sown chaos across middle-class
neighborhoods. This is false. Research suggests that the
recent surge in immigration has made America’s streets safer. That’s because
foreign-born men are very unlikely to commit violent crime.According to one study, only
2 or 3 percent of Mexican-, Guatemalan- or Salvadoran-born men without a high
school degree end up incarcerated, compared with 11 percent of their
American-born counterparts.

Trump argues that the flood of immigrants is taking jobs away from
unskilled native workers. But this is mainly false, too. . . . . That’s because
immigrants flow into different types of unskilled jobs. Unskilled
immigrants tend to become maids, cooks and farm workers — jobs that require
less English. Unskilled natives tend to become cashiers and drivers. If
immigrants are driving down wages, it is mostly those of other immigrants.

Trump claims the rich benefit
from immigration while everyone else suffers. Doctors get cheap nannies,
everyone else gets the shaft. This is false, too. The fact
is, a vast majority of Americans benefit. A study by John McLaren of U.Va. and Gihoon
Hong of Indiana University found that each new immigrant produced about 1.2 new
jobs, because immigrants are producers and consumers and increase overall
economic activity. . . . The cities that are doing best economically work hard
to attract new immigrants because the benefits are widely shared.

Identity politics distorts politics in two ways. First, it is
Manichaean. It cleanly divides the world into opposing forces of light and
darkness. You are a worker or an elite. You are American or foreigner. . . . Seeing this way is
understandable if you are scared, but it is also a sign of intellectual
laziness. The reality is that people can’t be reduced to a single story. An
issue as complex as immigration can’t be reduced to a cartoon.

Second and most important, identity politics is inherently the
politics of division. But on most issues — whether it is immigration or the
economy or national security — we rise and fall together.

Identity politics, as practiced by Trump . . . . corrodes the sense of
solidarity. It breeds suspicion, cynicism and distrust. Human beings
are too complicated to be defined by skin color, income or citizenship status.
Those who try to reduce politics to these identities do real violence to
national life.

Intellectual laziness. The term personifies the Christofascists and even most white supremacists who cling to myths and an imaginary time that in reality never existed. But they prefer to cling to such beliefs because it dispenses with the need to think for one's self and to have to analyze facts and circumstances. Indeed, ignorance is bliss to these people.

It is difficult to ever figure out what motivates Donald Trump and to a lesser extent his wife Melania (who personally, I can only assume, thinks about The Donald's bank accounts as she has sex with him - something that I admit is stomach wrenching to even contemplate trying to envision even momentarily). Perhaps the goal is to intimidate media outlets and bloggers. Perhaps they hope for a quick settlement with the Daily Mail and some quick cash to bolster lagging finances. But, their thought process - or lack thereof - is even more unfathomable now that Melania has sued a Maryland based blogger and the UK newspaper, The Daily Mail, for libel based on gossip that she may have once worked as an "escort" prior to snaring The Donald. But as an attorney, I can think of nothing more potentially damaging, if indeed she has something to hide, than to begin a court proceeding where the opponents can subpoena all kinds of information arguably relevant to the issue of Melania's past employment, immigration status, etc. In addition, as a public figure now that she has spoken at the GOP convention and other campaign related events, Melania has a heightened burden of proof to prevail. Variety looks at what I believe is an insane lawsuit. Here are highlights:

Melania Trump,
the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, filed a libel lawsuit
on Thursday against a Maryland blogger and the parent company of the Daily Mail over
reports that she was once an “escort.”

Trump’s
attorney, Charles Harder, said in a statement that the defendants “made several
statements about Mrs. Trump that are 100% false and tremendously damaging to
her personal and professional reputation.”

The lawsuit was filed in circuit court in Montgomery
County, Md., against Mail Media and Webster Tarpley, who
published the blog Tarpley.net in Montgomery County.

“These defendants made several statements about
Mrs. Trump that are 100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and
professional reputation,” Harder said in a statement. “Defendants broadcast
their lies to millions of people throughout the U.S. and the
world — without any justification. Their many lies include, among
others, that Mrs. Trump supposedly was an ‘escort’ in the 1990s before she met
her husband. Defendants’ actions are so egregious, malicious, and harmful to
Mrs. Trump that her damages are estimated at $150 million dollars.”

The
lawsuit cites an Aug. 2 blog post on Tarpley.net that cited rumors that
Trump was having an “apoplectic fit” after the “plagiarism incident” at the GOP
convention and was refusing to return to the campaign trail. The post also
claimed that she feared revelations of her time as a “high end escort.”

The
suit claims that Tarpley published the post while “consciously doubting the
truth of the claims and this acted with actual malice.” Public figures
generally have to prove actual malice, not just negligence, to prevail in a
libel lawsuit.

The Daily Mail
cited a book co-authored by a Slovenian journalist, Bojan Pozar, claiming that
a modelling agency she worked for in Milan was more like a “gentleman’s club.”
It also cited a Slovenian magazine claiming that Trump’s New York modelling
agency “also operated as an escort agency for wealthy clients.”

Trump “did
legitimate and legal modeling work for legitimate business entities and did not
work for any ‘gentleman’s club’ or ‘escort’ agencies,” the lawsuit says.

The suit says
that the Daily Mail “acted with actual malice.” The lawsuit says that Daily
Mail received a written statement from Trump’s representative saying that the
claims in the article were false, and that the book it relied upon “was
apparently self-published and inherently unreliable.”

The Daily Mail posted a statement
and retraction on their site on Thursday afternoon. “To the extent
that anything in the Daily Mail’s article was interpreted as stating or
suggesting that Mrs. Trump worked as an ‘escort’ or in the ‘sex business,’ that
she had a ‘composite or presentation card for the sex business,’ or that either
of the modeling agencies referenced in the article were engaged in these
businesses, it is hereby retracted, and the Daily Mail newspaper regrets any
such misinterpretation.”

Tarpley
also issued a response: “Melania Trump’s lawsuit against me is without merit.
Mrs. Trump is a public figure actively engaged in the Trump for president
campaign. We are confident that Mrs. Trump will not be able to meet her high
burden of proving the statements published about her on my website were
defamatory in any way. Her lawsuit is a blatant attempt to intimidate not only
me but journalists of all stripes into remaining silent with regard to public
figures. This lawsuit is a direct affront to First Amendment principles
and free speech in our democratic society.”

Other than trying to intimidate the media, the lawsuit makes no sense. I'd also note that many of Melania's past photo shoot jobs will not exactly help to make her look like an aggrieved, almost virginal political wife. I hope the Daily Mail (or more to the point, its insurance carrier) plays hardball and hits Melania with all kinds of subpoenas immediately.

I have frequently indicated that Donald Trump strikes me as a 21st Century version of Adolph Hitler, especial in the manner in which he has used racism, hatred and the demonizing of others to further his own ego driven political efforts. Some say that the comparison is unfair to Trump, but I nonetheless view the man as evil, utterly unable to empathize with others, and completely amoral. His entire career has been about making money at any cost and satiating his own narcissism. Now running for the presidency, I wonder at times whether or not Trump sees himself as America's Putin with an eye to pillaging the Nation as Putin and his cronies have raped Russia. In a column at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall hits on one of the similarities between Trump and Hitler. Here is the on target quote:

We've
now heard Trump's big immigration policy speech. Let me start with a general comment on
tone. This was as wild and as unbridled a speech as I've seen from Trump. Even
if you couldn't understand English, it would be stunning to watch the slashing
hand gestures, the red face, the yelling. It's hard to imagine any presidential
candidate in living memory giving such a speech. And again, this is if you
didn't know what the words even meant.

As the speech was unfolding, I said
something on Twitter that I'm sure many will find extreme or beyond the pale.
But watching this speech, compared to the press conference today in Mexico
City, what kept coming to my mind was the contrast between Hitler's uniformed
rally speeches from the hustings and the suited, statesman Hitler we see in the
old news reels in Munich and at other iconic moments in the late 1930s. Hitler
issui
generis,of course. His
crimes are incomparable. But the demagogic style, the frenzied invocation
familial blood sacrificed to barbaric outsiders - these are not unique to him.
When we see this lurid, stab-in-the-back incitement, the wild hyperbole, the
febrile railing against outsiders who will make us no longer a country - the
similarities are real. More than anything, perhaps the most chilling part of
this day is the contrast between the two men - a measured, calm statesman
figure we saw this afternoon and this railing, angry demagogue figure who
captured the emotional tenor of Klan rally. As I said, the ability to shift
from one persona to the other is a sign of danger in itself.

Trump and his followers are a clear and present danger and they need to be defeated at the ballot box and to become social exiles with whom decent people refuse to associate. (Please read the rest of Marshall's piece.) I also encourage readers to watch "Triumph of Will" and to draw their own parallels.

Other than getting himself media coverage, Donald Trump's trip to Mexico seems to have changed nothing. In his speech last night on immigration, Trump reaffirmed all of his most demagogic statements about immigrants and by implication, Hispanics. If all this was supposed to be a "pivot" to broaden his base, it clear showed that Trump is incapable of change or moderation and that those in the GOP who believed otherwise were fools. Trump's devotion remains to the white supremacists and white nationalist who want America white again and white privilege fully restored. Conservative column Jennifer Rubin unloads on Trump in the Washington Post. Here are highlights:

In Arizona on
Wednesday night, Donald Trump proclaimed to his hardcore base what he did not
have the nerve to say to Mexico’s president. He reverted to red meat and
angry rhetoric on immigration. In that regard, he is a typical bully — brave
only from a distance.

In Mexico earlier that afternoon Trump had
said no discussionoccurred about which country will pay
for his wall. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said for his part
“At the beginning of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made clear Mexico
will not pay for the wall.” A Trump spokesman seemed to confirm Peña Nieto’s
version when he put out a statement saying it should not be surprising the two
disagreed. (Got that?)

Safely back in the U.S., it was Trump as usual. With
intros from Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) who both sported hats
reading “Make Mexico Great Again Also” (I kid you not) — Trump began with
praise for the Mexican president, who had effectively called him out as a liar.
Insisting we have record levels of immigration (we don’t), he suggested the
immigrant system serves the needs of politicians(?). It was downhill from there. Trump
insisted we would build a “great” wall along the southern border and get Mexico
to pay for it. Of course, he’d first have to ask for it, something he claimed
he did not do today.

He
did not get more accurate as the speech went on: We could have 30 million
immigrants, he insisted, and repeated another unfounded claim that illegal
immigrants cost us $113 billion a year.

On
the subject of mass deportation he chose to hang tight. He said, “We will
be fair, just and compassionate to all” — but most compassionate to American
citizens. Later in the speech he said President Eisenhower’s deportation plan
did not go far enough. (He did not mention that the strategy was called
“Operation Wetback”.) On “day one” he promised to deport 2 million “criminal aliens”
(which would be hard since he says we don’t know if there are 3 or 30 million
people). How he did not say.

And
yes, mass deportation is still on the table: “Anyone who has entered the U.S.
illegally will be subject to deportation.” In case it wasn’t clear, he
insisted, “We will break the cycle of amnesty and illegal immigration; there
will be no amnesty.”

In
short, there was no pivot, no attempt to broaden his base. He remains a
prisoner of his own hateful rhetoric and his adoring fans. That it seems is
more important even than winning. Despite polling showing the vast majority of
Americans, including Republicans, disagree with his extreme stances, he cannot
admit error and therefore cannot depart from positions that make him
unacceptable to people outside his core base.

Clinton
campaign manager John Podesta actually had it right earlier in the day when
just after Trump’s Mexico visit, he put out a statement that said Trump“choked”on in his first overseas trip.
Podesta concluded, “After today’s trip, we still know where Trump stands: an
immigration plan that would deport 16 million people, end birthright
citizenship, repeal DACA/DAPA and build a $25 billion wall and stick the
American taxpayers with the bill.” He lateradded, “It turns out Trump didn’t just choke, he got beat in the
room and lied about it.” That’s not far off, but with one caveat that
should always apply to Trump: Whatever he says today may be repudiated
tomorrow.

With Russian hackers attacking news outlets, the Democrat party and perhaps now American voting systems, one seeming ally is Wikileaks and its egotistical founder Julian Assange who remains in the Ecuadorian embassy in London as he avoids possible prosecution for rape in Sweden. A length pieces in the New York Times looks at Assange and his apparent alliance with Russia and Vladimir Putin and a mutual goal of harming America and western democracies in general. The hypocrisy of Assange displayed by his actions and those of Wikileaks versus his supposed goals is stunning, especially in the way Assange ignores the murder of Putin's political opponents. Any respect I might have had for Wikileaks is gone and I now view Assange as a dangerous, dangerous and perhaps delusional individual. Here are some story highlights:

From the cramped confines of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where
he was granted asylum four years ago amid a legal imbroglio, Mr.
Assange proffered a vision of America as superbully: a nation that has achieved
imperial power by proclaiming allegiance to principles of human rights while
deploying its military-intelligence apparatus in “pincer” formation to “push”
countries into doing its bidding, and punishing people like him who dare to
speak the truth.

Notably absent from Mr.
Assange’s analysis, however, was criticism of another world power, Russia, or
its president, Vladimir V. Putin, who has hardly lived up to WikiLeaks’ ideal
of transparency. Mr. Putin’s government has cracked down hard on dissent —
spying on, jailing, and, critics charge, sometimes assassinating opponents
while consolidating control over the news media and internet. If Mr. Assange
appreciated the irony of the moment — denouncing censorship in an interview on
Russia Today, the Kremlin-controlled English-language propaganda channel — it
was not readily apparent.Now,
Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks are back in the spotlight, roiling the geopolitical
landscape with new disclosures and a promise of more to come.

In July, the organization
released nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails
suggesting that the party had conspired with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to
undermine her primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders. Mr. Assange — who has
been openly critical of Mrs. Clinton — has promised further disclosures that
could upend her campaign against the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump.
Separately, WikiLeaks announced that it would soon release some of the crown
jewels of American intelligence: a “pristine” set of cyberspying codes.

That raises a question: Has WikiLeaks become a laundering machine for
compromising material gathered by Russian spies? And more broadly, what
precisely is the relationship between Mr. Assange and Mr. Putin’s Kremlin?

Those questions are made all
the more pointed by Russia’s prominent place in the American presidential
election campaign. Mr. Putin, who clashed repeatedly with Mrs. Clinton when she
was secretary of state, has publicly praised Mr. Trump, who has returned the
compliment, calling for closer ties to Russia and speaking favorably of Mr. Putin’s
annexation of Crimea.

Mr. Assange said he was motivated by a desire to use “cryptography to
protect human rights,” and would focus on authoritarian governments like
Russia’s. But a New York Times
examination of WikiLeaks’ activities during Mr. Assange’s years in exile found
a different pattern: Whether by conviction, convenience or coincidence,
WikiLeaks’ document releases, along with many of Mr. Assange’s statements, have
often benefited Russia, at the expense of the West.

To Gavin MacFadyen, a WikiLeaks supporter who runs the Center for
Investigative Journalism at the University of London, the question for Mr.
Assange is not where the material comes from, but whether it is true and in the
public interest. He noted that intelligence services had a long history of
using news organizations to plant stories, and that Western news outlets often
published “material that comes from the C.I.A. uncritically.”

Recent events, though, have
left some transparency advocates wondering if WikiLeaks has lost its way. There
is a big difference between publishing materials from a whistle-blower like
Chelsea Manning — the soldier who gave WikiLeaks its war log and diplomatic
cable scoops — and accepting information, even indirectly, from a foreign
intelligence service seeking to advance its own powerful interests, said John
Wonderlich, the executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a group devoted
to government transparency.

Others
see Mr. Assange assuming an increasingly blinkered approach to the world that,
coupled with his own secrecy, has left them disillusioned.

Another person who collaborated with WikiLeaks in the past added: “He
views everything through the prism of how he’s treated. America and Hillary
Clinton have caused him trouble, and Russia never has.”

The result has been a
“one-dimensional confrontation with the U.S.A.,” Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who
before quitting WikiLeaks in 2010 was one of Mr. Assange’s closest partners,
has said.

And the beneficiary of that
confrontation, played out in a series of public statements by Mr. Assange and
strategically timed document releases by WikiLeaks, has often been Mr. Putin.

Like
Mr. Trump, who stood to gain from the Democratic Party leak, Mr. Assange
supported Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, and he has repeatedly
gone after NATO — taking on two organizations that Mr. Putin would like nothing
more than to defang or dismantle.

The map above of the projected path of Tropical Storm Hermine pretty much says it all - Hampton Roads is in for a wet Labor Day weekend. Hopefully, the storm passes through quickly and we will be able to salvage at least part of the weekend.

Donald Trump continues to try to dupe gays into supporting him despite the pact that he made with a veritable who's who of American Christofascists and anti-gay hate groups. Likewise, with his trip to Mexico today, he seemingly is seeking to fool those offended by his strident anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic demagoguery. As part of this Trojan Horse effort, Trump shook up his campaign's leadership and brought in Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Bannon. Now it turns out that both Conway and Bannon
are members of the secretive Council for National Policy ("CNP").What is frightening about CPC is the many
extremists who belong to the organization and the hatred that is their stock in
trade. The Southern Poverty Law Center ("SPLC") - which tracks hate groups across the nation - has a report on CPC and Bannon and Conway's membership. Here are excerpts:

Longtime
Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of
the far-right Breitbart News operation, were named on Aug. 17 as, respectively,
the Trump campaign’s manager and its chief executive officer. The appointment
of Bannon was by far the more controversial choice, given his role at a “news”
outlet known for bashing immigrants, Muslims, women and others.

The Council for National Policy ("CNP") is an intensely secretive and shadowy group of whatThe
New York Timesonce
described as “the most powerful conservatives in the country.” It is so
tight-lipped that it tells people not to admit their membership or even name
the group. Revealing when or where the group meets, or what it discusses, is
also forbidden. The organization, which can only be joined by invitation and at
a cost of thousands of dollars, strives mightily to keep its membership rolls
secret.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which publishes
Hatewatch, obtained acopythis
spring of the CNP’s 2014 membership directory, a closely held document. It
shows that Conway was a member of the CNP’s executive committee that year, and
that Bannon was a regular member. It is not known if they remain.

They include people like Michael Peroutka, a
neo-Confederate who for years was on the board of the white supremacist League
of the South; Jerome Corsi, a strident Obama “birther” and the propagandist hit
man responsible for the “Swift boating” of John Kerry;Joseph Farah, who runs the wildly conspiracist “news”
operation known as WorldNetDaily; Mat Staver, the Liberty Counsel leader who
has worked to re-criminalize gay sex; Philip Zodhaites, another anti-gay
activist who is charged with helping a self-described former lesbian who
kidnapped her daughter from her former partner and fled the country; and a
large number of other similar characters.

The CNP is not controversial so much for the
conservatives who dominate it . . . . as for the many real extremists
who are included. . . . people
who regularly defame LGBT people with utter falsehoods, describe Latino
immigrants as a dangerous group of rapists and disease-carriers, engage in the
kind of wild-eyed conspiracy theorizing for which the John Birch Society is
famous, and even suggest that certain people should be stoned to death in line
with Old Testament law.”

The revelation of Conway and Bannon’s CNP memberships comes
at a time when the Trump campaign has suffered a number of reverses and
internal problems.

[T]he SPLC concluded in its May report on the CNP: “At
a time of extreme political polarization in our society, in the middle of an
ugly presidential contest which has featured an almost unsurpassed record of
ethnic, racial and sexual insults and lies, Americans deserve to know who their
ostensible leaders are mixing with as we collectively decide our country’s
future.”

Anyone who falls for Trump's effort to pretend his has moderated his positions is, in my view, nothing less than a fool and an idiot.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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